Actually, I do have an account here. made one I think back when y'all first started, but there's honestly too many fragmented off-shoot forums for me to keep track of, so I mostly stay in The Shelter. However, when I woke up this morning and was deluged by messages from BSN friends via other media, I figured the news would spread most everywhere.

Not sharing publicly in BSN since talking about bans is forbidden.

But of the calm yet challenging posts I put up last night all over regarding the announcement of the forum shutting down, I did allow my temper to get the best of me in one. I circumvented the profanity filter to drop an F-bomb and said that if the forums are shutting down, we might as well operate under Purge rules and go loot stores and burn couches.

The first was already a forum rule infraction. The latter was believed to be "provocative" by BioMod03 (outsourced group, not BioWare), so I received my first ever warning point... and a perma-ban.

That was around midnight last night. My salt levels shot through the roof considering people with more warning points and *ahem* troubled posting history than I were saying the same things, yet they weren't banned and I was not even temp-banned, but perma-banned. So, I took to Twitter and DMed some BioWare peeps. Because the mods there clearly do not understand my history there, nor my community support, nor my BioWare support, nor the fact that I actually consider many individuals at the company to be my friends and gaming buddies from past interactions.

BioWare peeps examined my now-deleted post that got me permabanned and agreed that the mod's reaction was severely over-the-top for the actual infraction plus my past history. Several actually got just as righteously angry as the regular posters there did. Trouble is, no one's come back from a perma-ban before. But bless them, three BioWare people spent their damned Saturday morning figuring out how to unban me, and the apologies were profuse.

So, this was crappy and annoying, but they made it right. I can't be mad at that, but I am being as wary of the outsourced mods as possible.

Sorry, my memory is horrible -.-

I'm glad that they lifted your ban, good on them! It'd sure be interesting to see some of the Bioware Employee responses to this whole situation.

Just the thought of receiving a PERMANENT BAN for the word "fuck" is beyond preposterous. A warning? Fine, I can get that since they've discouraged profanity on the forums forever. But a PERMANENT BAN? And to someone that has _no_ history of being anything other than an upstanding, valuable member of the community? While these same mods have ignored how many blatant shitposts and troll threads, many of which do the same or worse? The same mods who apparently don't notice when there's a 20 page thread of someone transparently just stirring up shit, but do lock down a random thread right below it for being too offtopic?

Well there may be some truth to what Gaider later tweeted- the place is almost impossible to moderate.

Like when they gave me a warning for swearing without even bypassing the profanity filter. What else could they have done in the face of such reckless evil?

But yeah, you get several actual bad actors like that together and it becomes a circle jerk of, yes, toxicity.

Sure, but I'm not sure for what since neither you or I were involved in the string of posts I was referring to.

Ohh, ok. We're cool.

Not to mention their IP addresses. I've brought it up a few times in an effort to let people know what they are getting into, but I don't want to come across as spammy or like I'm not okay with alternative sites that aren't VSN (I am okay with them, just not that one).

They have warning points and ban buttons for a reason, plus the mods they have are outside help and paid; they are just lazy and seem to ban the wrong people when they do hand out bans.

Unenviable, yet doable. Especially if you have people you're literally paying to do it.